Learning to Translanguage: Semiotics Differentials in Academic Literacies in a Pre-University Program for International Students

• In Event: Translanguaging, Trans-Semiotizing, and Social Semiotic Rehabituation in Plurilingual and Pluricultural Education

Abstract

International students have often been problematized for their putative language and literacy problems in many Anglophone countries, where higher education is increasingly internationalized and marketized. Both building on and revisiting English for academic purposes and the marketization of higher education, this study discusses how international students’ language “problems” are discussed and institutionalized through the construction of general English academic literacies (GEAL) in a pre-university program in Canada. While language is constructed as a trivial problem, it has been compartmentalized for accumulation, which does not allow the international students to transition smoothly into their target university academic disciplines. The results of the study call for researcher–teacher collaboration to co-design and co-develop a critical content-language integrated curriculum for the international students.

Author

• Bong-gi Sohn, Simon Fraser University